I’m Back (Thoughts, Mix10k, Quince, More…)

It’s been months since I’ve posted anything here, and if you’re a faithful follower, I apologize. Not that my monthly posts were anything to really keep you going, but at least monthly is more frequent than tri-monthly. So, where have I been? Writing actually. I have just submitted my final chapter for Foundation Fireworks CS4, a book that will be published by Friends of Ed in March. We’re planning on posting a couple of full chapters in PDF form on the Adobe Devnet site, so you’ll hear more about that book later. I’ve also authored a number of Silverlight chapters that will be published "soon". Stay tuned for more info there as well.

In addition to all the writing that you can’t enjoy yet, I submitted a Mix10k contest entry titled Bitster — check it out and vote for me if you get a chance! I had a lot of fun working on it. I used some bitmap parsing concepts posted by Joe Stegman to create the effect. Of course I had lots of other ideas that I wanted to pursue, but the 10K limit stopped quite a few of those in their tracks.

I’ve also been working on the next release of NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization — I’m really excited about the work we’re doing there. I have fodder for plenty of posts queued up based on our experience with that product, so watch for a number of posts in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Since this is just a rambling post and a re-cap of the past several months, I want to also mention Quince, the new UX Patterns Explorer from Infragistics. Quince was just introduced today and I think it’s going to grow into a must-have resource for User Experience and Application Design professionals. Using Quince, you can browse existing and accepted patterns that solve common user interface problems. You can also post your own screenshots and solutions – something I’m really excited about. I can’t wait to see the community embrace this tool and advance user interface concepts!

So, that should do for now. Watch for more from me in the coming weeks, but don’t hold me to any sort of commitment! I just can’t make frequent-post commitments.